Title of recording: Oral History Interview with Raymond Rapp, November
17, 2000. Interview K-0253. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)

Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0253)

Author: Rob Amberg

Title of transcript: Oral History Interview with Raymond Rapp, November
17, 2000. Interview K-0253. Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007)

Title of series: Series K. Southern Communities. Southern Oral History
Program Collection (K-0253)

Author: Raymond Rapp

Description: 172 Mb

Description: 44 p.

Note:
Interview conducted on November 17, 2000, by Rob Amberg;
recorded in Mars Hill, North Carolina.

Note:
Transcribed by L. Altizer.

Note:
Forms part of: Southern Oral History Program Collection
(#4007): Series K. Southern Communities, Manuscripts Department,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Note:
Original transcript on deposit at the Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill.

Editorial practicesAn audio file with the interview complements this electronic edition.The text has been entered using double-keying and verified against the original.The text has been encoded using the recommendations for Level 4 of the TEI in
Libraries Guidelines.Original grammar and spelling have been preserved. All quotation marks, em dashes and ampersand have been transcribed as entity
references.All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as "All em dashes are encoded as —

[TAPE 1, SIDE A]

Page 1

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

ROB AMBERG:

I am in the Mars Hill town hall with Ray Rapp, who is an administrator
at Mars Hill College and the mayor of the town of Mars Hill. Ray, could
you just introduce yourself and let me see if we're picking all of this
up?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Sure, be glad to. I am the Dean for the Adult Access Program at Mars
Hill and have been at Mars Hill College for twenty-three years, and have
been mayor, this is my third year as mayor in my second term. Before
that I had two terms, two two-year terms on the Board of Alderman here
in Mars Hill.

ROB AMBERG:

I wanted to just add that it is three fifteen right now in the
afternoon, and Ray, you mentioned that you had been at Mars Hill
twenty-three years. Where is your home place?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Originally I was born in Connecticut. I lived there the first twenty-one
years of my life. I was in Manatee County, Florida for two years at the
University of South Florida, five years at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and came to Mars Hill in the fall of 1977.

ROB AMBERG:

What are your degrees in?

RAYMOND RAPP:

I have a Bachelors Degree in History and English from Western
Connecticut State University, a Master's from the University of South
Florida in US History, and I'm ABD [all but dissertation] in US History
from UNC Chapel Hill.

ROB AMBERG:

So how did you end up in this place?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Well, a friend of mine, Ron Eller, had come over here to—in fact, Ron is
the godfather to my daughter Jennifer. He had invited us over for a
weekend. We had come over here just to tour the campus and visit Ron in
his new place of residence. We ran into

Page 2

some folks
on campus who had asked if I had written any grants before, and I had.
They asked me if I would be interested in writing a Title I grant, which
I did. I thought I'd come over here for two years and manage that grant
and then go back to finish my dissertation. It's twenty-three years
later. We're still here and very much in love with the community and
very much a part of the community, and have raised one daughter who has
just graduated in May from Wake Forest University and is married to an
attorney now down in Hendersonville. I've got a nine-year-old who we're
trying, in the process of raising in this community. We've fallen in
love with it.

ROB AMBERG:

That's great. How did you, when you first got here what was your
response? Did you have a sense of what your immediate response was to
this place?

RAYMOND RAPP:

I did. I did. I can remember the first day, the first minute I set foot
in Mars Hill because we had come here, come over for the weekend to
visit Ron Eller. I stepped out of the car in front of the theatre, Owen
Theatre. I stood on the sidewalk and I obviously was a stranger on the
campus and in the community, and this very nice young woman came up and
said, ‘May I help you?’ I was just kind of blown a way. It was just, she
saw I was a little bit confused and was disoriented and wasn't sure. I
told her that I wanted to find Dr. Eller's office and [asked] if she
knew him. She did, and she escorted me to the office. I thought, My
goodness, you stop on sidewalks in Chapel Hill and sometimes you get
bowled over by the crowds. So I remember vividly that, and just
absolutely being charmed and the strong sense of personalism that's a
part of this community, which from that day one is what we've
experienced.

ROB AMBERG:

When you say, when you use the word community are you thinking of the
college community or the larger community?

Page 3

RAYMOND RAPP:

Well, it's both. Clearly the first contact was with the college
community, but the ethos of the campus of Mars Hill really picks up on
the rural ethos of the town of Mars Hill and Madison County itself.
There's, there are many of the values, the small town values that are
very much a part of the campus and the community, and they blend well
together. They have the normal tensions that you have between town and
gowns everywhere, but the basic ethos, the strong sense of personalism,
a much stronger sense of community than I had experienced in some of the
larger communities that I had—

ROB AMBERG:

How does that get played out? Can you give me some real specific
examples of community?

RAYMOND RAPP:

To me it's the good news and bad news that was driven home by my
daughter when she was ready to leave this community when she was
eighteen years old. She'd done well in school and everything, but there
were always five hundred sets of eyes on her. From a parental standpoint
it was wonderful, the wonderful assurance of knowing that your children
are safe, that there are people around to look out for one another in
that very special way. When you're an adolescent, of course, there's a
rebelliousness that goes with that, and when she got her first car our
talk was just, Remember that you can't go flying around this town
without somebody calling me and observing your behavior and letting me
know about. She, ‘I know that.’ She was very indignant about that, but
now she's married and reflects on that, and it's very much a special
memory. But it is that sense of place. It's a sense of security. It's a
sense of mutual caring, a sense that gives rise to things such as—. I
still celebrate the Make A Difference day kind of, where we go into the
schools now. It's an old fashioned barn raising in one sense, but
there's good fellowship and community, sense of common

Page 4

purpose, and it's very much alive in a small town such as Mars Hill
today. So it's something that we need to preserve with great
intentionality.

ROB AMBERG:

I'm going to ask, how old are you?

RAYMOND RAPP:

I'm fifty-five.

ROB AMBERG:

Okay. I'll be fifty-three next month. So we're pretty much the same
generation. I'm curious then about your youth in western Connecticut.
Did you experience that same sense of community then when you were
growing up? Was it a small town?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Yeah, I grew up in the town of Bethel, which was a community of five
thousand. My dad was a Republican town chairman, and he was very much
involved in the community and the Masons and the church and everything.
I did have, there was a similar sense of that. However, it was a
community that was in the throes of change while I lived there from the
exurbia coming from New York. It's a community now of about twenty
thousand.

ROB AMBERG:

Wow.

RAYMOND RAPP:

And it's a place where when I return—I very rarely get back there, but
periodically I've been back there and places where I grew up have simply
been bulldozed. There are apartment complexes. There are shopping
centers, that type of thing. What had been playgrounds and wooded areas
and actually farmland? There were still farms there when I grew up. I've
seen that transition at one time in my life. It was really in the throes
of change when I was growing up. I remember they had their centennial
anniversary in 1955, and that to me was almost a watershed. I remember
their talking about they had reached this threshold figure of five
thousand, and there was a

Page 5

great celebration of the
growth of the town. But I don't think they anticipated the size growth
that was really about to occur. It's really changed the nature of the
community and the relationships within that community.

ROB AMBERG:

Yeah, my upbringing was similar. I was raised in suburban Washington,
but it was out in Maryland and pre-Beltway [interstate bypass that
circles the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area]. It was still a
lot of small communities, and a lot of rolling farmland and farms that
were still there. Then Beltway in the early to mid-sixties came in and
the whole dynamic changed. That area, Montgomery County, Maryland was
always one of the fastest growing communities in the United States, and
the Beltway again just fed that. Certainly it exploded. In a way, then,
your coming here was almost a return to some of that. So that must be
nice.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It has been. So many of the values that I had seen in the small
community, the rural values associated with that community I found here
again when we moved here. I think I was puzzled about why it just seemed
so easy to be here. I don't know a better way of describing, but it just
was easy. My mother is a Down Easter from Maine. I understood the
mountain humor very quickly because I had been raised around a family of
Down Easters; that dry wit, don't crack a smile, but they'll pull your
leg at the same time. It just felt natural, and it's really been years
later that I've reflected on why that felt so good and natural and
enjoyable, because when I came here, I certainly came here with the idea
that we'd do this grant. We'd complete the grant period and move on. Yet
here we are.

ROB AMBERG:

Here you are.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Twenty-three years later.

Page 6

ROB AMBERG:

And still comfortable.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's not only comfortable, it's something that as we in the role that
I'm playing now—what I wanted to be able to do is help the folks be able
to preserve those features of this community that they want to preserve.
Accommodate change; we're not going to stop change, but if we can
accommodate it in a way that it doesn't overrun us [and] that we can
control, then I think I can play a significant role. That's where I see
things today.

ROB AMBERG:

Well, to me it's really interesting—the community in Bethel when you
were growing up, it was really kind of on that cusp of change and
starting to grow—to find yourself in the Mars Hill community when it is
in my mind more than likely going to experience the largest growth in
its history. This is going to be a really expansive area, I think, for
the town and the whole community. In a way you are really positioned
right in the right spot to really play a role with that.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Some of the things that we saw back in the early '90s—because as you
know, this road has been promised to people in western North Carolina
for at least forty years or more. But I think—every governor who ran for
office in that period made commitments to complete this road, but I
think everybody had heard that so often. When Jim Hunt really did start
working to get the money to make it happen, folks still treated it as
if, ‘Oh yeah, we've always heard about that. That's going to happen some
day. Some day but probably not in my lifetime.’ That's why in '93 and
'94 when they turned the first shovelful of dirt down here just to build
the interchange, not to extend the road but to finally build the
interchange, I think people snapped to attention and said, ‘Wait a
minute. This is really going to happen, and if it's going to happen what
are we going to do to plan

Page 7

for that so that we can
control that change?’ There's some of us that didn't want us to become
another gas station stop on I-26, or find a number of businesses in the
community that were incompatible with the lifestyle we've grown used to.
That's where we really moved into the strategic planning process which I
think the whole town got behind, which was interesting because that
shovel full of dirt when they turned it, people were saying, ‘Wait a
minute. Change is about to occur, big change is about to occur.’ As you
say, in dimensions that had not been experienced in most people's
lifetime here. So they started that. When we sent out, we got the
planning board together, the town board together in '94. We sent out a
thirty-seven-question survey. Now that violates all the rules for
sending out questionnaires. We sent it to 800 households in the town.
Believe it or not, we got 256 responses to that questionnaire. People
sat down and wrote essays. They told us about the things that they liked
about this community and the things that had been special and the things
that needed to be preserved. You had on one hand some that wanted to
preserve the small town community, but we'd sure like a Wal-Mart down
here would be a lot more convenient. We had to sift through some of
that. There were some themes that emerged on that. Those themes were
first and foremost to preserve the small town character of the
community, because people like it when for example some of the older
adults—when the police chief calls them in the morning just to check to
make sure that if they live alone that they've made it through the night
all right. They always have a friend when the chief calls to check that.
That's very reassuring. There aren't a lot of communities that have a
police chief that does that.

ROB AMBERG:

That's a wonderful thing, yeah.

Page 8

RAYMOND RAPP:

Absolutely. They reflected on that. They talked about, There are always
tensions with the college. They certainly want to see the college campus
beautified. They want to see that—the college itself had been an
important part of the community, and to preserve that. They wanted to
see our downtown revitalized, because at that point I think we had eight
of the shops in downtown which were empty. So we really had kind of a
hole in our living room, if you will. So they wanted to see some
appropriate business development that went along with that. They wanted
some efforts at beautification. They wanted a controlled fashion, find
some ways that we could control development so that our people could
have decent jobs. That working at a Hardees or a gas station is maybe
not enough of an economic benefit from the coming of the road. Part of
our work was to look at what would be appropriate economic development
on that. So we came up with a strategic plan for the town that was
finally approved in May of 1996. This was a two-year process. We had
public meetings. We had the survey itself. We had an extended planning
board for the town, plus the town board itself, plus others representing
the college and other interests to sit in on these meetings to work on
the plan. We came up with forty-seven key recommendations relating to
what we wanted to see happen over the next ten years, ten to fifteen
years in the town of Mars Hill. So one of the things involved
revitalization of the downtown area, because it was getting shabby
looking. It was, obviously many of the business had been here at one
time, the food market, which had been in the center of town that the
Robinsons had owned. There was Ingles, and of course, Ingles here in the
community now has given way to the Ingles Supermarket, has given away to
the superstores in Weaverville which are much larger.

ROB AMBERG:

And Marshall.

Page 9

RAYMOND RAPP:

And Marshall now. So they've moved out. There was a great dress shop
here, Robinson's dress shop.

ROB AMBERG:

I remember that.

RAYMOND RAPP:

That was just, we had people that would come from southwest Virginia,
eastern Tennessee, half of Biltmore Forest. That's where the women came
because Willory knew their sizes, their likes and ordered accordingly,
and just wonderful outfits that you would have in there. It was a
tremendous downtown business, great draw. We had a good restaurant there
across the street, Café Nostalgia, that really fed off of—so many of the
people who would shop there and then come across the street to that, as
well as several other restaurants that have come and gone over time. But
they had moved out or were moving out. So we needed to do something,
revitalize our downtown. So one of the recommendations from the
strategic plan was to work with HandMade in America. They are a small
town revitalization project, which we did. We worked with Becky Anderson
from HandMade, and we put together a small town revitalization team that
came in. One of the first things that we did was say, ‘Okay we've got to
spruce up our downtown. We need something visible to show that we're
serious about this.’ So at the corner as you come in on [North Carolina
Route] 213 and Main Street, you'll see a gazebo there. We took $6,000 of
grant funds that we had gotten through the HandMade folks. We got the
owner of that, which is a private lot, to agree to let us use the space.
We put up the gazebo and began the plantings that you see there now.
That was kind of the signal that things were about to change in our
community for the better, and what we were trying to do with the
revitalization.

Page 10

ROB AMBERG:

It's interesting in that Mars Hill, I very clearly remember that period
of time when the buildings were empty. There still are empty buildings
of course, but that was kind of a phenomenon that was happening all over
rural America. I mean, I travel a lot in rural North Carolina. I see
this every little town that I go in. So it must have been kind of a
daunting challenge to think that not only having to just revitalize your
town but also realizing that you're kind of bucking the national trend
to do that.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It was, but I really pay tribute to Handmade in America and Becky
Anderson. We were the first four towns in their project; there was
Andrews, North Carolina, Chimney Rock—

ROB AMBERG:

Bakersville.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Bakersville and Mars Hill. Those were the four, and we all faced similar
problems. So some of our original meetings were just, I thought that
they were wonderful because there were lots of idea sharing, and we even
shared for example that every town has its group of naysayers. Mars
Hill, it's down here at the Wagon Wheel, and we're building a gazebo.
Well you should've heard the folks down there. How could you spend tax
money on something as silly as this gazebo? Or as one of our friends
from Bakersville said, ‘What is that gayzebub you've got over there?
What are you doing over there with that gayzebub?’ But then within six
months after it had been up people have started having weddings there.
Choral groups were singing. It became really a centerpiece and a
showpiece. People took a great deal of pride in it, and now you have to
remind folks that that's only about four years old. They treat it as if
it's been there since the beginning of the town. But it really did help
key what we were trying to do in terms of this downtown revitalization.
Then we have the Blue Ridge Realty that

Page 11

renovated
its building, or its upstairs and down; there are apartments upstairs
above that plus the business itself downstairs. We began that process of
encouraging a development which was tied to really the Crafts Heritage
tourism, because one of the things that you well know with Nobie Bracken
and the hooked rug industry. What we wanted to do was, the tourists are
going to come with I-26. What's the nature? Do we want to just isolate
them and have some gas stations, fast food restaurants down here, or do
we want to—and we were thinking about this both with the strategic plan
as well as with HandMade—how about making [State Route] 213 from the
interchange of I-26 coming into Mars Hill, how about making that the
gateway to Madison County? As a result of that we—after we did the first
project on the gazebo the second thing was, we need a Visitors Center
for Madison County, and we don't have one. We searched for that. We
finally put together what I think is still an unusual partnership. It's
a partnership in which we've got the town of Hot Springs, Marshall and
Mars Hill, the County of Madison through its economic development board,
Madison Chamber of Commerce, the Madison Community, the Mars Hill
College itself, which provided the building in which the Visitors Center
is located, Blue Ridge Mountain Host, all to partner to pay the expenses
of operating a Visitors Center. Folks who know county history know that
that's pretty difficult to get because we're talking real dollars here.
We're talking $1200 a year from Marshall that comes in to support that
Visitors Center; $1200 a year from Hot Springs; $2000 annually from the
economic development board of the county. So this was a partnership that
was put together, that was cobbled together of folks that agreed that
this concept, this notion of this Visitors Center drawing people from
I-26 to the Visitors Center not to sell ticky-tacky rubber tomahawks,
but to bring them here to expose them to some of the rich

Page 12

cultural heritage of this region—the hooked rug industry
itself, the Bailey Mountain cloggers. We're thinking about how we
showcase them, the national champion—I think this is the tenth straight
year, they're ten time and current reigning national champions—to go to
the depot in Marshall on Friday night for traditional mountain music, to
go down to the French Broad River to go rafting, to go to the spa and
the hot springs in Hot Springs itself. To get people off—and maybe this
isn't their destination as they're passing through, but the next time
they come through we'll get them to make this destination for a quality
kind of experience, which is an integral part of what we are and who we
are. We're still in the process of evolving the Visitors Center, but we
have the rockers on the front porch because we think that says Madison
County. We're informal. You sit down and rock and you talk. People
respond to that. You go into what is a former house on the campus. So
you're into a living room, dining room, what it was originally. But
we're keeping the informality of that. In fact, right now we have the
exhibits in here. We've got a class, Brenda Russell's class from Fashion
Merchandising is looking at how the track lighting that needs to go in
there needs to be displayed. We're talking to Richard Dillingham to see
what the Rural Life Museum can provide for some items that can go in
there that say Madison County, or antiques that can be used in the
Visitors Center itself. The important thing is this is Madison County.
This is unique, and it's the things that we have valued highly. It's the
things that we want to preserve, and if you would like that, we'd like
to have you as a visitor to come and experience that. So that Visitors
Center, was one of the, that was the next step in this HandMade Project
in terms of how we could make that into a realization. We did things, we
had public meetings with people in terms of the kinds of businesses they
wanted to see downtown. We talked very bluntly to some

Page 13

of the merchants that if this is the living room of Mars
Hill, it's dirty. You need to spruce yourself up. We brought Ron
Holster, who is in charge of the Main Street program over in
Waynesville. They've just done an incredible turnaround in terms of
their Main Street, and Ron is kind of the guru that made that happen. He
came, and he was very blunt with them about how they need to merchandise
themselves—the stores that were open, how to attract stores to the
community and do simple things like make sure those plate glass windows
are clean.

ROB AMBERG:

That's right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's your living room, and when you invite people into your living room
do you have them dirty and dusty or do you try to have it picked up?

ROB AMBERG:

Exactly.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Those are the kinds of folks that came in and talked to us. We had an
economic planner that came in as part of this process. We had Ron, who
had been involved successfully in the Main Street project. People in the
community we went over for example [and] looked at Black Mountain to
see, Black Mountain has revitalized its community. We were looking at
like communities that were struggling with the same issues, and
particularly ones that had done it successfully. They were just more
than gracious in terms of sharing some of the things that they did.

ROB AMBERG:

At some of those meetings—you were talking a little bit about how people
in the community have kind of pitched this project over a period of
thirty, forty years, perhaps, and have been just kind of thinking that
it was maybe not ever going to happen. Was your sense when that
groundbreaking happened and people were realizing that this is going to
happen that the vast majority of people were very positive minded about
it,

Page 14

that they wanted this in the community, that
they—what might have some of those reasons have been for them?

RAYMOND RAPP:

I think no question about it, the ease of access in and out of the Mars
Hill community itself and in and out of the region itself in terms of
speeding that access. Hope for bringing of better jobs perhaps through
some industry or that would be appropriate to the community, because
part of our plan, our original strategic plan—in fact what we're working
on right now and we'll roll out in January of 2001—is our new land use
plan for the community. And what we're looking at as part of that is the
Shadowline property, which is on the north end of town. It's thirty-four
acres. It used to be a Shadowline plant that made lingerie. It was an
old cut and sew operation for many years. It was closed about a year and
a half ago. There were only about thirty-four people employed up there
when it finally closed. At one time they had about 120 that were
employed there. We began to look at that property with the county of
Madison and say, ‘Now that's an appropriate area for industrial
development.’ You've already got a plant there. We've got water to it.
All we need to do is run sewer lines to it. We're in the process of
extending our natural gas from Weaverville into Mars Hill, which will be
completed this summer.

ROB AMBERG:

Wow.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Yeah, they've already started digging over by the Honeywell plant. So we
knew these things were coming but we said, ‘Okay, do want to have
something for our tax base, good jobs,’ and we do have the Honeywell
plant which pays extremely well. There were 400 people employed there,
and it's now a division of General Electric in the latest takeover
that's occurred. It's a very solid plant. But what happens, you're
always

Page 15

worried if you're tied to one plant, as
we've seen with so many communities, and that plant closes for whatever
reason or moves. So our idea that's evolved and is evolving with the
industrial site where Shadowline was located, we'd like to have a large
number of small companies up there so that if one goes out of business
or moves we haven't had a total devastation to the economy. So we have
Advanced Tools that's employing seventeen people that opened this past
month. It has purchased the plant which occupies eight acres of the
thirty-four acres. [Suits?] who owns that wants to develop that as an
industrial park. We're working with another client right now who wants
to move here that will employ thirty-five persons, between thirty-five
and forty persons. They will build their own or build its own
freestanding building on the site. For instance, Advanced Tools does not
need all of their thirty-three thousands acres, thirty-three thousand,
thirty-three thousand square feet I believe in that Shadowline building.
He only needs a portion of it. So he wants to lease that as well to
another production operation. Again the model there is a large number of
small plants that will provide good wages for people that live here. Yet
we won't be devastated by one of them going bankrupt, moving—whatever
reason they might leave. What's exciting about that is when this
property was put up for sale we talked with the potential owners. There
were a couple of folks who went up there and looked at it. We and the
County of Madison agreed to do some things—for example, extending the
sewer lines up there to the property in exchange for a request that
within five years they request annexation for the town. That all of them
[get] the town's services. They want fire protection; they want sewer
they want water; they want trash pickup. But rather [than] bring in
someone that simply wanted to exploit us we wanted someone that would
come in and be part of the

Page 16

community. And so the
companies that we are talking with and the people that we're working
with are very much of like minds. I think the growth may be a little
slower. It won't be the big bang—here's a big plant kind of thing. We'll
grow those jobs in a way that I think will be high paying jobs, people
who want to become a part of this community and be good corporate
citizens and be contributors to the community—

ROB AMBERG:

And more sustainable, too, because—

RAYMOND RAPP:

And much more sustainable because of that reason.

ROB AMBERG:

Of course. I'm curious. You were talking about the access that is
provided with something like the highway and things like that and the
people being very supportive of that idea. One thing that's interesting
to me about that word access, it both brings people in and brings people
out. One of the ideas I think of rural community is people do tend to
stay in place—they're working on their land or they're working right in
the immediate community. So I'm wondering, is that a kind of a contrary
idea? It's almost, how does that work with this idea of kind of
maintaining community?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Well, back to the survey, we did and people I think are very astute.
They understood that they wanted the road. They wanted the economic
changes. They wanted the benefits. They saw the benefits of it. But in
the surveys themselves they talked about, But we want to preserve our
small community. We want to preserve these relationships that are so
important. Neighborhoods are important, and so they inherently
understood that this, there was a flip side to this. When we were doing
our own planning for this, we went and looked at the Interstate 40
impact study that was done between Raleigh and Wilmington. We wanted to
see the results of that. What were some of the things that we needed to
look at? One of the things that jumped out at us first of all was the
fact that the

Page 17

nature of crime in the community
would change. Right now, if there's a break in or something, it doesn't
take our folks too long to figure out who's—

ROB AMBERG:

That's right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Who's in the ().

ROB AMBERG:

I used to always love EY Ponder for that. EY just knew everything and
everybody, and it was, something happened, he'd have it pegged in a
minute.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Didn't have to wear a gun because there would be—

ROB AMBERG:

That's right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

So there's, the nature of—for example, hit and run kinds of break-ins,
where people come off an interstate highway and break-in. They're gone.
By the time police are there, they're probably already in at least South
Carolina or something like that.

ROB AMBERG:

Or Johnson City.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Or Johnson City and beyond. So we began to say these are serious issues
that we have to begin dealing with. That's why we were planning, because
how are we going to have to change our police force? The thing that we
did at Wednesday night's meeting, we have gotten a grant now from the
Governor's Highway Safety Commission to buy a new police car. They will
fund the first year one hundred percent salary of a new police officer,
seventy-five percent the second year, fifty percent then decreasing. But
we've got to have that. Do we need that officer today? No, but when
2002—in December of 2002 when we're sure that road will be open we
definitely need to have that additional staff person on hand. Welcome
Center, we're going to have to service that Welcome Center. The town of
Mars Hill is the Welcome Center on the highway because we have to
provide sewer and water. Now we're got, we're dealing with, struggling
with

Page 18

our infrastructure as all small communities
are, but that's a shock of thirty thousand gallons a day that we are
going to have to send to the Welcome Center, plus process the waste
water from that as well. So we're paying very close attention to these
kinds of things because there is the other side of that. And clearly the
thing—if you go to the heart of what people wrote about in their
surveys, while they want the small community and they want the Wal-Mart
at the same time, give them the choices and they'll probably go for the
small community. So they realize while they want the convenience, they
want the access to that, they really don't want the things that are the
quality of life things that make Mars Hill community special. So that's
the delicate balance we walk. Now we're helped by a number of things.
We're doing our planning. The Ivy River watershed literally puts half of
our town, half of our town under watershed restrictions.

ROB AMBERG:

Wow.

RAYMOND RAPP:

From one stance that's wonderful. That half by the way is from Main
Street to the east to I-26. So when you come in the, off of I-26 on the
213 corridor that we talked about earlier, that's going to limit some of
the development that's going to occur under that. At the same time,
we've already got the state to invest about $180,000 in tree plantings.
Three years ago we started the process of putting a tree line and other
appropriate plantings coming up into the community itself, because if we
identify ourselves and we want this to become the gateway to Madison,
we're going to have to make that more attractive. We've begun the
process of enforcing what had been a fifteen-year-old sign ordinance,
but we caused some negative feelings about that. Not that we introduced
any new legislation, or new ordinances—we are enforcing [those] that are
already on the books. But we did—

Page 19

ROB AMBERG:

And that was for size of signs, placement of signs.

RAYMOND RAPP:

That's right. So there's no off-campus signage. The sign, the billboard
that used to be just as you turned on the entrance ramp to what will be
I-26, 19-23 now used to be that big billboard there. That's the reason
it's no longer there. We're still in litigation over that, by the way.
But we've gotten serious about that. We want to present ourselves in the
best fashion possible. We've also adopted a community appearance
ordinance. It took us two years to do it, and we only did that last
year. If you build any of these structures in this community now, you
must have appropriate plantings. We are beginning to pay attention to
those kinds of things, and doing it very intentionally now. So these are
things that have grown out of this. First, the strategic planning—first
the road coming triggering the strategic planning, which has triggered
everything from the land use plan that we're doing now to the downtown
revitalization and business revitalization in the community that we've
been working with in terms of HandMade. Again, making sure that it's
appropriate for us. So I'm, these are all factors that get in there. How
do we have a diversified economy in the balance that's there and provide
good jobs for our people, maintain the small town values that I think
that we all hold so dear and makes it so attractive to us? What's
amazing to me is watching the rest of the country trying to establish or
re-establish those values in their own communities through neighborhood
organizations and cities and that type of thing. We've got it here. What
we've got to do is preserve that. Accommodate the change. It's coming,
and I mean, we can stand up there and rail against it, but it's coming.
I think this community has demonstrated its resolve to seeing that we do
control that in a way that is acceptable to us. It's not something that
we wake up one morning and say what happened to us?

Page 20

ROB AMBERG:

It's interesting to me that—I was just up in Vermont about a month ago,
a month and a half ago, and I was very much struck by the fact that you,
first of all you saw no billboards the whole time I was there. Saw maybe
one McDonalds, nothing like a Wal-mart or Home Depot, anything like
that. Most of those places weren't there, but what I did see even on the
very small stretches of interstate that were in northern Vermont, you
get off those and into the small towns. There really are flourishing
small towns from one to the next. You go in one, and each town seemed to
have a hardware store and a bookstore and cafés and very small motels.
No chain franchises, that kind of thing. That really struck me. At the
same time, it's interesting to me that the way they've achieved that is
by passing laws and passing zoning ordinances and things like that. It's
curious to me that we now are—in terms of preserving some of those small
town values we're basically having to pass laws to do that, to make sure
that that happens and stays in place. Certainly not making a judgement
on that, but it's really interesting that that's what we have to do.

RAYMOND RAPP:

I think if the community—and it's very difficult to get the community to
agree to this in some ways, because you're going up against particularly
a mountain culture [with a] ruggedly strong individualism, and value is
inherent in the people here.

ROB AMBERG:

I can do whatever I want.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's my land and I can do whatever I want with it. So the community
really has to see itself in some kind of danger, and I really, I pay a
lot of tribute to the people in Mars Hill. They are really very
intelligent people. They really are. They look down the road, and they
see what's happening. They look at other communities and see what's
happening, and I think they say, ‘We don't want that to happen here.
We're willing to

Page 21

get behind some ordinances that,
to get behind some enforcement procedures to support these kinds of
initiatives that are right for the preservation of what we're trying to
preserve here.’ I think it's a, it'll probably never be quite what we
wanted.

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

But it won't be what it would've been had we not done this. It's an
ongoing process. The beautification efforts for the town continue. We
just got two thousand bulbs for the town given to us from, through
HandMade by way of the arboretum. These are all things that are just
ongoing—how we can continue this process and how we can continue to
clean up the corridor and make it inviting and attractive to ourselves
and to those visitors who are guests that come to the community.

ROB AMBERG:

Right. Again back to that idea of access and people—I'm thinking of
people coming in—do you see, well a couple of question regarding that.
What has been, well in terms of, I'm seeing an influx of new people
coming into the community more and more every year. Thinking back on
yourself twenty-three years ago when you arrived, do you have a
different sense of the type of people who seem to be choosing to move
into not just Mars Hill but Madison County, or at least eastern Madison
County? I'm thinking of places like Spring Creek.

RAYMOND RAPP:

There's clearly a different—there's a new group coming in. When I came
to the community, there were a lot of “back to the earth” people in the
community. But in fact while they were coming in in the `70s the fact of
the matter was that the population trend was down and continued during
the `80s. That was true in Mars Hill itself. Many of the shops had
literally gone south to Buncombe County and Asheville. The businesses,
the college was in a stagnant phase in terms of its [growth]. That was
the `80s when the

Page 22

post-war baby boom had ended. So
many colleges and universities were in periods of decline in terms of
enrollment. That was experienced at Mars Hill College. If anything, what
struck me during the `80s was really a static or almost a stagnant
period where people were, there really was not much growth. The county
was in bad shape financially. The town fortunately was in better shape.
It was managed fairly well during the `80s—throughout in a very
conservative fashion, but it was basically pretty stable. Not in terms
of any growth, but—there was a decline in population. Then we turned the
corner on the `90s and I think the—when Jim Hunt ran in '92 and was out
here as he was in the `70s when he ran—“we are going to build that road
and good things are going to happen.” Everybody nodded and said that
sounds like a good idea, but when he really did set about seeing that
money was put aside for that road—because it had been a target on the
DOT plan as you know for lo these many years. There was never any
allocation of any money for it.

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

He set about to do it, and then I think that combined at the same time
there were more—

[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]

[TAPE 1, SIDE B]

[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]

RAYMOND RAPP:

And to the folks coming out for their hobby farms we have the influx of
ever increasing numbers of retirees moving into the community. The
capstone—or not really the capstone, but the next phase in that
development was just the recent opening in April of 2000 of the Mars
Hill Retirement Community. We've got fifty-four units there that can
house sixty-nine persons in assisted living facility. That's phase one
of a three-phase project that will involve the Bruce Farm golf course,
condominiums and single homes

Page 23

that Jud Ammonds is
planning to build. But again, when you're attracting retirees—you've got
a significant retiree population in places such as North Laurel. So
we're seeing these folks come into the county. Property values are going
up. Mars Hill, if you have a house and you put it on the market, it
literally is snapped up. You don't see those ‘for sale’ signs stay up on
houses very long. The longest one I saw was a house on South Main Street
that the person had no intention of selling. But she said, ‘I'm going to
put this big price tag and if anyone is foolish enough to come down and
buy it,’ this is what she told me, she said, ‘I'll sell it.’ That house
sat there for about three months, and she just sold it a month ago. She
said, ‘I couldn't believe it. We didn't dicker at all. They paid the
money, so I'm moving back home.’ She's from over in Spring Creek; not
Spring Creek, from Big Pine.

ROB AMBERG:

Does that give you pause this idea of—it's almost like there is a
gentrification kind of thing that's beginning to happen in the
mountains. As a student of history, you're aware of those kinds of
processes, whether they be in cities or rural communities, and it's much
the same. I'm curious as to your thoughts about that, I guess.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Well, it's a real phenomenon. Where I go with that is as a leader of the
community I want to see that there be balanced growth. I would not want
to see, for example, Mars Hill simply be a college town or a Honeywell
community or a Mars Hill Retirement Community community. What we've got
to get is balance here. I want retirees that come in here volunteer in
our schools, for example. When we have a Make A Difference Day that
they're out working a part of that, and seeing themselves as an integral
part of this community and not, I raised my kids and now I don't want to
pay taxes to support the schools, the other services, the parks,
recreation activities. That kind

Page 24

of thing. So,
yeah, I understand where you're going with that. I think just as a
leader the question—and as a leader I say as long as we keep what we've
put in some of these documents, that we've been planning that we keep
balance in mind, that we not let any one segment become the dominant
segment in here. We'll be okay and we can do it. As it relates to
newcomers, I think there is a great desire in this country right now for
people to come and live in communities such as this. That's why I think
we're blessed in many ways. But I think as an educational institution of
Mars Hill College, and someone such as Richard Dillingham with the Rural
Life Museum—all of us have a—it's important for us to train our people,
whether it be at the Visitors Center or new people in the
community—train isn't the word, but educate, educate people about the
evolution of this community. How it got here. How it evolved to the
place that it is today and how they can plug in and be good neighbors.
It's not a matter of, we're not going to have some of the things that
you might have had in New Jersey.

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

But we've got some other things that make this as attractive, if not
more attractive. So when you chose to come here, you were attracted by
these things. With programs that we do, for example, we have a number of
our newcomers who work in the Visitors Center. Annually we do a
significant amount of training. We want them to know the history of this
area so that they understand their place in it. But to make that
programming available, whether it be theatre productions at SART
[Southern Appalachian Repetory Theatre], whether it be through the Rural
Life Museum, whether it be through special programs which are being done
now over at the new retirement center where folks know about the
community in which they have come to live [so] that we can

Page 25

take the native and the non-native—the implant, so to
speak—and integrate them in terms of this community. But again going
back to the balance, I think it can be done. I'm an example of someone
who is an implant. I value the people here, the natives and the
newcomers equally. But I also learned very quickly that it doesn't
matter where I came from. Do I value what's here?

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

And the people and the perspectives, and am I sensitive to that history.
It's not for the people who live here to educate me. It's really up to
me.

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

But that's why I say the college as a mediating agent can be important
in educating people and providing that backbone to make a successful
transition into the community. I don't think I'm pollyannish. But I
think if we're planning this way and if we're thinking this way and if
we're developing programs with this in mind, we're going to be way ahead
of other communities.

ROB AMBERG:

Yeah, it's significant. I mean, twenty-three years ago—I've been here a
little bit longer than that, but not much; just by a few years. I knew
Ron fairly well when he was here, Ron Eller. We were both here at the
same time. It seemed to me back then that there were so significantly
fewer numbers of newcomers that I sensed that—especially when I was
living out in the county spending time either in Laurel or over on Big
Pine—that there was a real need for newcomers to become part of the
community, because you were real dependent on the local population for
everything from learning what trees to cut for firewood to just
maintaining and learning how to live in the community. I sense now that
that's not as important for people coming in. It's not necessary; the
population of

Page 26

new people has grown so large that
we as a community really do need to concentrate on how we all work
together and how to make this community what we want it to be. That to
me seems significant. It's a different attitudinal shift.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Unless I'm misreading it, it really is a national—

ROB AMBERG:

I totally agree.

RAYMOND RAPP:

There is a desire for this. We get the travel writers through here
periodically. They will talk about us as, What it is like in Mayberry?
But they're saying it not with sarcasm. They're saying it with envy.

ROB AMBERG:

Exactly.

RAYMOND RAPP:

And how they can replicate that elsewhere, or bring it back. When people
come—because it's this kind of value, these values and this orientation,
and it's easier than if people simply come in as, We are the agents of
change.

ROB AMBERG:

That's right. I think that's entirely correct. Do you see a role for—as
part of that mix, as part of that diversity in the community, do you see
something like farm land preservation as having a role in that and
playing in that? This community has always been agricultural in its
base, and that has been—whether it be tobacco production or just
self-sufficient farming—

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's in our land use plan, as a matter of fact, that will roll out in
January. We have one large farmer. So it's amazing to me. Folks come in
and they love the bucolic setting, and they love the views, and then
they have to live next to a dairy farm. So we have to, that's part of
the education process. There are certain times of the year when the
manure is spread on the fields, and the town's going to smell funny.

ROB AMBERG:

That's right.

Page 27

RAYMOND RAPP:

And it's a—

ROB AMBERG:

And that's one of the values.

RAYMOND RAPP:

But in fact, exactly right. With great intentionality we're trying to
preserve that. As I say, part of this community will not be developed
because it's in the watershed. So we'll always have that, but when I
think of some of this community, it is a farm community or traditionally
had been. The town itself, as you know, grew up around the college. The
college was formed in, was organized in 1856. The town was not
incorporated until 1893, but the town essentially grew up around the
college itself. But this was right in the heart of farm country. These
were the farm families right around the college itself. So I can't even
imagine. Well, I can, but I don't want to imagine Mars Hill without
that, without agriculture being a part of it. I think some experiments
that were tried on the 900-acre Bruce Farm that the college owned ()
those days. We had the organic gardens out there that we were trying to
promote. We were trying to upgrade the local herds as well. Probably
would've been better if we had been an ag extension school
[agricultural/cooperative extension school, i.e., a land-grant
institution] because a four-year liberal arts college—that was a
struggle to do that thing but—

ROB AMBERG:

It might have been a matter of timing, too. Just—

RAYMOND RAPP:

To get that thing. Now what's being planned for it, there was great
intentionality about turning that into a rural Appalachian Center, which
would be both living history as well as encouraging alternative crops
and so forth. The only thing that scares me, there's an important
symbolism in this and it goes back to your earlier question, is now
we're looking at a golf course complex, retirement homes and single
family homes out there. That—

Page 28

ROB AMBERG:

That's a significant change.

RAYMOND RAPP:

That is a one hundred and eighty degree turn from what that property was
originally to be used for by the college. I appreciate the, both the
symbolism and the reality of what that change means. But again, I think
if we can, if we say that area is designated for that type of
development, that's not the community of Mars Hill. That is that segment
of the community and that particular portion. Again, back to the
diversity and balance that we're trying to achieve. We're okay. We'll be
okay. At least in that period of twenty years that's a dramatic change
for what was envisioned for the property that Mr. Bruce had, his farm
and the reality that is about to occur.

ROB AMBERG:

I'm curious, you are again not from here, not from around here are
you?

RAYMOND RAPP:

No.

ROB AMBERG:

But you're also from the North. I'm curious then in your role as town
mayor, how was that for you? How was that being an outsider and then
running for public office, and what kind of issues did that raise for
you in terms of insider/outsider? How did you respond to those
things?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Well, I think it's something I live with everyday. First of all, I think
having become a part of the community and been involved with a number of
organizations and activities and community outreach, volunteerism in the
community. I'd gotten at least known for that, and having some
association with the college helped, because there is the tension
between the college and the town which flares up periodically. Then
there's just probably the length of time of having been here. Having
said that, that evolved and I think a fundamental love and respect for
the people of this community—I really do have a deep heartfelt
admiration as we talked earlier. I really felt at home when I came to
this

Page 29

community. There are so many values that I
realize are rural values that I had grown up with and been away from,
and very much the modernistic setting. When I came here, it felt
natural. It felt good. I felt very good and functioning in this kind of
environment, and a healthy respect for the people who have been here for
so long. It helped. Now, the modernist thing is still there. I need to
tell you immediately, because when I started pushing for a strategic
plan—when I first ran there was a lot of resistance because I probably
pushed harder than some folks would've liked me to push. In fact, the
then mayor, who is a dear friend of mine, came to my house one night and
said, ‘You know, you need to slow down a little bit.’ Another friend
from the town came to me and said, ‘You know, don't be too quick to turn
down the ivy. You may find a brick wall behind it.’ So I needed in those
early phases to step back, because the thing that happened and that was
told to me lovingly not—

ROB AMBERG:

Sure.

RAYMOND RAPP:

—not in a threatening way, saying, You know, maybe you need to slow
down. You made some people feel as if you are beating them on the back
to get these things done. I think trying, there are enough times that I
don't lapse back and get pushy sometimes. But I try to be open and hear
that and care about the people that tell me that, because they care
enough to tell me and be respectful of that. I find these people just
absolutely wonderful.

ROB AMBERG:

Yeah, my experience has been that if you are open to people around here,
they just really not only appreciate but really respect opinions and
respect the people themselves and their land and families, and all those
kinds of thing. Then people basically will do anything in the world for
you. That, I think, would include trusting you

Page 30

in
an official capacity, I think again after a period of time. As you
mentioned, it does take, people have to understand that you are making a
commitment to this place. That's what one of the things that concerns
me. I think a lot about when I first was here. I spent a lot of time
over in Laurel with Dellie Norton. I recognized pretty quickly that
Dellie's commitment to her property, to her land and the value that she
placed on that land was significantly different than the value of
anything my parents might have placed on their property in a suburban
environment.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Absolutely. It's family. It's kinship, and the ties that are related to
the land. It's a—it's an extended intricate network there.

ROB AMBERG:

In Dellie's place, too, I think there was a sense that she could, she
knew she could sell the property. But she knew also she could live off
of that property, and had lived off of that property. That had really
sustained her and maintained her lifestyle, her integrity, her family
all of those kinds of things. Again, I think that for those of us—and I
include myself in this, certainly—my tie to the land is different. I
truly love this place. I can't dream of living anywhere else. But yet I
also know that I don't want to have to be self-sufficient off of my
property either, and I don't know that I could, in all honesty. It's not
like the stuff isn't there for me to do it, but I certainly don't know
that I have the wherewithal to do it.

RAYMOND RAPP:

In 1981 we wrote a grant to the Humanities Committee, and the program
was ‘Selling Your Land, Selling Your Birthright’. We began to look at
some of the changes that had occurred or were about to occur in Madison
County. We had session in Mars Hill; we had it over in Laurel at the
Laurel School, in Hot Springs, but I remember that. People were
passionate. It was amazing in their conversations and attachment to

Page 31

the land, yet there was something sad about it
because they were saying, How can we preserve it? How—our young people
are leaving. They're not going to work on the farm. It really kind of
comes back to the coming of the () growth and—

ROB AMBERG:

It really does.

RAYMOND RAPP:

How do you keep? How do you stay?

ROB AMBERG:

It really does keep coming back to that. Again as we've mentioned, the
road isn't necessarily the agent of change, but it will serve to
accelerate it. But that process has been happening for a long time.
Dellie's children certainly weren't interested in farming and staying
there; they were ready to get out and work public jobs. That was
certainly long before either of us got here. That process was already
starting.

RAYMOND RAPP:

I saw that tape replayed with my daughter. That's why I shared with you
before. The thing that was, she just couldn't wait to get over to Wake
Forest. It never occurred to her to go to any school here that would be
Mars Hill or any place else. She was ready for—that is normal
developmental adolescent stage, and it was good that she went away. But
then she saw it from a different perspective, and she used to regale her
mates at school with stories of the bear which—last summer that she was
here we had a bear, it was a dry season. It was rummaging through food
and climbed the tree in front of the post office down there. She had,
these guys were from Detroit and New York and places like that. They
couldn't believe that you'd have that in a little town. So she would
kind of laugh at that at first. Then it's interesting watching her
transformation over four years. She had grown up in this community and
now she really has this great appreciation for that and come back. So
she wants to be able to be some way involved in preserving the same kind
of heritage.

Page 32

ROB AMBERG:

I had an interesting kind of conversation with Lee Hoffman just a week
ago as part of this project. Lee was talking about his dad and how his
dad had always encouraged Lee and Will to get out and see the wider
world, because—Dick had not so much a distrust, but he really had a
knowledge of the makings of this part of the value structure in this
mountain community being that you stay in place. It becomes a very
insular kind of community, and that he in watching his sons grow up in
it and going to Madison High and becoming kind of embedded in the
community in one sense and then wanting them to get out. I'm kind of
curious about your experience about that same idea with your
daughter.

RAYMOND RAPP:

I was glad that she did that. But I was glad as a parent that was seeing
developmentally where she felt almost chained. If you talked to her at
that time, she almost felt chained by that. Now having gone out and
traveled to Europe, to have studied away and to be exposed to a part of
the world, I think she has come back to that different appreciation, and
I'm glad. I would want any child to have that exposure, because it is
the difference of making this a conscious choice as opposed to feeling
trapped. When you make it as a conscious choice, after some experience,
there's no substitute for maturity and motivation and experience. That's
nothing that you can, as many times as you can say, ‘Oh no, this is the
best place in the world to live.’ Until they experience it for
themselves—

ROB AMBERG:

That's right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It may be the best place in the world for me, but it may not be. My son,
who is nine, coming up now—Aaron may find that in his world the best
place for him is

Page 33

Atlanta, Charlotte, New York,
overseas some place. That may be, that's part of our own self-discovery
isn't it? Where we fit. You grew up outside of Washington—

ROB AMBERG:

And end up down here.

RAYMOND RAPP:

And end up here. It's the right fit. We have to discover that. I
recognize that. That's why in talking to some implants coming in, I
celebrate with the world in which they entering in coming here and try
to enhance the appreciation of the world. The people, I mean, are just
absolutely phenomenal, and I remind them they made this as a choice. If
they start complaining about ‘You don't pick up the trash twice a week
or we do it once a week’ or whatever, there are some trade offs here.
It's a choice thing. How much do you love the place?

ROB AMBERG:

How much do you want to be here? What's your motivation for being here?
What do you perceive the, and I guess I'm asking you to just kind of
project down the road a little bit. What do you feel after 2002, the
highway opens? What do you perceive as some of the other changes coming
along the corridor? Maybe not just restricted to Mars Hill, but kind of
along that stretch up to Tennessee line, which is—

RAYMOND RAPP:

If we can continue to do what some of us are working on—we've had a
conversation with Jerry Plemmons, and Jerry and I serve on the Welcome
Center Committee, for example. We were able to get the Madison County
commissioners, the last board of commissioners to () heroic act in the
midst of the campaign season by declaring this as a scenic road through
here, so that no billboards could be erected. That was a pretty gutty
thing for them to do.

Page 34

ROB AMBERG:

It is. I went to a couple of those meetings on the sign ordinances that
they had down at the courthouse and listened to people like Harold
Wallin be very eloquent about the fact that, ‘I want to make some money
on—’

RAYMOND RAPP:

Passion.

ROB AMBERG:

Passion on this property that is cut off from me. I can do nothing with
it now. Let me do something with this.

RAYMOND RAPP:

You're going right against the grain of a fundamental value system. It's
my property; I can do with it what I want. That rugged sense of
individualism that's tied to that. I'm cheered, for example, from the
Welcome Center through Mars Hill and to the Buncombe County line, for
example, that there's going to be limited development because of its
location, number one. But number two, since we only have two
interchanges in Madison County I think we—if we can control the
development in the same way we're trying to do in Mars Hill so that we
can get the type of development, encourage the kind of
development—there's a key word—encourage the kind of development—work
with people who want to develop it the way that we would like to see it
developed—we'll be okay, because I think it's going to be one of the
most scenic. You've been up there. You know. You drive along that
corridor. That is going to be one of the most scenic stretches of roads
in the eastern United States. It is just absolutely breathtaking.

ROB AMBERG:

All the way up to Erwin. It's just going to be ()

RAYMOND RAPP:

Absolutely. And the Tennessee folks have done their job as far as I'm
concerned as far as preserving the scenic quality of that portion of the
highway. We've done our part through the Buncombe County line. The cause
celebre for me right now is

Page 35

to see if we can get
Buncombe County to take similar action, because the last billboard you
see is right here at the Madison/Buncombe County line at the Ivy River.
Then it stops there. Now the city of Asheville has taken action. It's
going to take about what, seven to ten years as those signs are
amortized and then finally removed. They've done their part. What I
really want to see is a scenic corridor that goes from the South
Carolina line through the Tennessee line in North Carolina. So that we
have this major thoroughfare but a major and attractive beautiful scenic
highway that goes from one end to the other. We're laying some
groundwork with the Land of Sky Regional Council. We've had
conversations about this. We're cooperating with some of the groups in
North Carolina, western North Carolina that are trying to make this
happen. But that's probably not what you were really going for. What
you're really going for is what do I see significant change. Places that
have continued to struggle, for example, I guess a lawyer could make a
career just doing title searches on property in Wolf Laurel. There have
been so many, there have been so many land companies that have come in,
purchased the land, setup the tracts, then gone belly up. A new
operation takes over and so on and so on. I think that the places like
that will probably now grow. That will stabilize and that will grow,
because you're going to have this ease of access on and off of I-26. I
think that if we can grow tourism the way we want it right now that will
happen. I think people are doing it with intentionality. They're talking
about the things that they want. We want to have Nancy Darnel's Pottery
for example featured. That would be worth coming to Madison County to
see. I'm not looking for ‘made in Hong Kong’ items to be found up and
down Main Street. We want quality kinds of items. I think we're doing
that with intentionality, working with HandMade in America on that. I

Page 36

think we can make that happen. It's going to
take some time. But I think that's going to occur. We're going to try to
really promote Western North Carolina, and Madison County, in particular
as a destination location. We'll be staffing that Welcome Center. What
we tell people about western North Carolina—what we want to convey—is in
our hands to help shape. I think we need to see if we keep doing this, I
think we're going to see more mobile entrepreneurs come into this area
because they want to live here. They can do their business anywhere.
They have internet access. So I think we'll see more of those kinds of
individuals plus more high tech firms coming in here, because they can
locate in conjunction with a college that has some brain power that they
would like to be able to tap into, plus the access that they need. I
think we'll see more of that occurring. I think you'll see what we're
striving for is this balance. You'll see more retirees. They're going to
come. You're going to see more folks coming out the corridor—just look
at the land prices going up now—coming out of Asheville to buy their
hobby farms, but we're in this community building one acre developments.
Jud Ammonds down here on South Main Street has got those twenty-one lots
down there. He's already sold four.

ROB AMBERG:

Wow.

RAYMOND RAPP:

These are, you've got Max Lenon down there developing his tract. I guess
they are five acres, five and ten acre tracts that he's selling down
there. So that trend, I think, will continue with folks that come here.
I think the industrial base will remain fairly small. We've got a
limited amount of land. These mountains are going to make sure there
won't be the massive kind of industrial parks you see in the eastern
part of the state or South Carolina. But we'll have that here, so we can
provide a solvent employment base for our people.

Page 37

ROB AMBERG:

Do you see that growth moving west into the county?

RAYMOND RAPP:

Absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, what will happen sooner [rather] than
later-and sooner is probably within a ten to twenty year period—we'll
link up. In fact, we're doing engineering studies now with the town of
Marshall to link our water and sewer systems together. They have excess
sewer capacity and had a water shortage. We're in pretty good shape
water-wise, but we're going to have to put an intake down there in the
Ivy River as well. But by doing that we could adequately take care of
their needs as well as growth along that 213 corridor There are nine or
eleven miles between Mars Hill and Marshall. So we're planning for that
kind of growth. We're trying to do this with some intentionality,
because we do that—you see, we've taken what I think is a gorgeous drive
through there. If we put that infrastructure in place along there this
is going to be a corridor of economic growth for business as well as
those subdivisions that develop off of 213 itself. There's no question
about it. If you just watch the, where you're able to purchase land
right now. It's moving west. The closer you are to the corridor, the
prices are escalating tremendously. So property—I remember hearing this
when in the little town going all the way back to Connecticut. I could
have bought that land for forty-five cents an acre, whatever. Now
they're talking about a piece of land down here, ‘I could've bought that
for fifty four thousand.’ The asking price for the four acres right now
is $900,000.

ROB AMBERG:

God. Is that along the—

RAYMOND RAPP:

Right down here on 213 beside the Hardees there.

ROB AMBERG:

Phenomenal.

Page 38

RAYMOND RAPP:

So here's a fellow who has basically been living on welfare for years
and years.

ROB AMBERG:

And suddenly he's sitting on a gold mine.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Suddenly he's sitting on a gold mine.

ROB AMBERG:

Is he just, I'm just curious. Is he just ecstatic about that? Or is
there this sense of—

RAYMOND RAPP:

I wouldn't characterize that. He would have a junk yard there if we had
permitted him, if it weren't for—

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

But he's an interesting character. He's one that happened to be in the
right place for him—if you think of it in that sense—at the right time
when the road comes. He hasn't gotten anyone to offer. I know what the
property, I know what the realtors say is the asking price for it. I
don't know anyone who is offering the money. There are prices that are
being quoted now right next to the Madison Manor up here, the land
that's been graded out now. The price tag on that's a million dollars.
So if you've got a spare million.

ROB AMBERG:

I'll go get that this afternoon.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Go get that this afternoon. You can go up there.

ROB AMBERG:

That's an interesting piece of land, of course, because the church and
the cemetery were right there and sat right there behind that. That was
all just wooded and really just a wonderful sense of a place for that
cemetery. Again, to see it then take a—put a commercial value on it like
that is a very significant change.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's a major change.

Page 39

ROB AMBERG:

Like this man you were just talking about who would put a junkyard down
there on this $900,000 property if the town would let him. That's got to
be a really, almost like you were saying an every day kind of issue,
where you are dealing with this older value system that has been in
place for a couple hundred years. Yet with this change coming and not
just the desire but the real need to accommodate this change and to
really address it, that's got to be just a, a very, very difficult day
in/day out struggle I would think. Kind of—

RAYMOND RAPP:

It's always a balance. There are some businesses that have cropped up
down on 213, for example, in our long-range plan. I said, ‘Well I really
wish that that would not be what develops there.’ So we are able to
control some of it. We're not going to be able to control all of it.
We'll set the direction and the trend and the tone, but then as it
relates to the values, they're in conflict with that. There was just one
fellow that said to me, ‘I appreciate what you are doing trying to save
this piece of land of mine, but,’ he said, ‘if somebody gives me a
million bucks, they can do any danged thing they want with it.’ I just,
well, that's the struggle. That's the struggle. When you're dealing with
the business people as well, walking into them and talking about
economic development plans, of which they are a part and that they have
a stake in—for example, and I'll give you just one of the most difficult
battles that I got really beaten up on in the election a couple of years
ago—the controlled signage stuff. Now it wasn't a matter of we
understand if you're a business, you've got to have a sign. So we
negotiated with the state to put up the logo signs that you see on all
our interstate highways even though this 19-23 is not I-26 yet. It will
not be until they complete the corridor. But we negotiated with the
state to agree that they would put those up so that the businesses would
have

Page 40

some signage too, so you would stop at the
Hardees and the Exxon and the Western Sizzlin and the Texaco and
whatever. That was just a, that was a nasty, that got into a nasty fight
because, ‘You're trying to kill business.’ No, we really want it. We
want to attract business to you, but—and we think by making that
corridor and the way it's landscaped down here at the interchange that
that will be inviting for people to come rather than just one big
billboard after another. That detracts rather than attracts. We've
learned that we have got to get the business people involved at every
phase of this planning process so that they can feel that—they can see
that there's benefits to them to do what we're doing and it's not being
punitive.

ROB AMBERG:

That almost becomes a different way of viewing marketing as much as
anything else. Just kind of maybe an older kind of viewpoint. ‘I've got
a business. I've got to have a big sign’ as opposed to as you say have a
very inviting kind of entrance way into the community that is just going
to naturally bring people in. That is a very different way of marketing
community and marketing place and marketing business. It's also, maybe
a, maybe a more sophisticated approach or something, I'm not sure. But
certainly a more modernistic kind of look, I think.

RAYMOND RAPP:

I think probably that's the key word there. The word is more modernistic
look. When we went over and were doing our study, there was a group of
us that went over to Black Mountain. We went to Black Mountain for two
reasons. One, you've got Interstate 40 going right there by it.

ROB AMBERG:

Exactly.

RAYMOND RAPP:

And yet they're downtown. They've done just a wonderful job of
revitalization. It's just a great place, Cherry Street there. They
warned us about, You're

Page 41

going to have two business
communities. You're going to have the one business community that will
go up along the interstate, and then there will be the rest of your
business community. In fact, that's what they've been fighting for a
number of years. It was getting McDonalds, which had the—I don't know
how high that McDonalds sign went up. But I mean you could see it for
miles and miles away to get them to agree to the sign ordinance and
bring that thing down in compliance. They're making some inroads over
there, but we saw that happening. What we said is before that occurs,
before we get these two business communities, let's see how much we can
do to integrate those folks and in conversations on the community
appearance board, on the planning boards and other ways. So we've been
doing it with intentionality. Now the Comfort Inn is enlightening in
this regard in two ways. First of all, the economic developers that came
to us said, ‘You people keep thinking about this road and the
development of your community and you're looking to Asheville. The
growth is going to come out from Asheville.’ He said to us, ‘Watch out.
You're going to get hit in the back of the head.’ We weren't quite sure
fully what he was saying, but I mean, he was clear at saying there's
going to be a lot of growth coming down from the Ohio Valley that's
going to come down here investment-wise, as well as the traffic. This
will become—as we know, the shortest route from the Ohio Valley to the
beaches of South Carolina will be right through here. Well, the first
business to buy property down here was a fellow from Parkersburg, West
Virginia. Patel, who builds the Comfort Inn down here. Wait a minute. I
guess we are. We're so focused on this growth from Asheville, we better
be looking at it coming down the corridor. The second battle came with
the appearance thing and getting Patel to understand. Patel had bought
property all the way down. He is

Page 42

an investor, and
he had brought property all along the route of I-26. He owns the Winston
Hotel, which is there at the Biltmore Square Mall, the one they had all
the problems with the contractors. It's open now, but he had built that.
He bought property, I think, for a Holiday Inn Express at Weaverville,
right by the Waffle House. And he bought this one. Now what he wanted
was signage. We went out to dinner with him, spent three and a
half-hours with him one night and had to convince him of this. He was
trying to convince us that he needed signage. He couldn't have, his
business would fall apart without it. He fussed and he fussed and he
fought us and he fought the town and he pleaded and was trying to do
everything he could. Finally there was enough resolve on the part of the
community and this board that they weren't going to back down on the
ordinances, and he's lived with it. But it's a constant, the point is
that's a constant battle. We really did try to engage him and explain to
him what we're trying to do to enhance his business. Well, it turns out
that he's got a great operation down there. He by his own telling has
exceeded his own estimation of his business plan for the expected
revenues, and one of the reasons is because a number of the engineers
and folks on the construction job spend Sunday through Thursday.

ROB AMBERG:

Stay down there.

RAYMOND RAPP:

That's right.

ROB AMBERG:

Plus it's the only franchise place in the whole county.

RAYMOND RAPP:

It is. It is, and that's providing the major income for the tourism
development authority's budget right now.

ROB AMBERG:

I wanted to ask you, what do you think about the idea—again we are down
at our place, and we've had visitors come down with their children from
New York,

Page 43

Washington, that kind of thing. We
immediately recognize kind of the ecotourism potential just on our
little property. One day these kids go horseback riding. They go river
rafting. We go swimming over in the Laurel River. My wife makes soap
with them. Those kinds of things. We potentially would do photography,
for example. So obviously it's kind of—these kids from DC or New York
absolutely had a ball. Best vacation they've ever had, that kind of
thing. So immediately our heads start clicking about those kinds of
things. Is there a danger in kind of looking at that value system,
looking at that what was kind of an integral part of life in the
community but then having it become more of a museum, more of a tourism
kind of thing?

RAYMOND RAPP:

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but that's where I go back
to the diversity and balance. We've got to have the diversity, and it
has to be balanced. If we become a museum, we're simply shutting the
door to the majority of the population here. We've got so many people
that are leaving the county now to get work. Even if they're still
living in the county, they're in Asheville or some place else for their
employment base. We have a retail leakage here that's killing us in
terms of taxes. So if we don't think with great intentionality about how
we preserve these experiences that are part of the traditional culture
and the traditional rural way of life—that has to be a part of it.
Ecotourism has to be a part of it. The cultural heritage tourism has to
be a part of it. That's it. But I think we start kidding ourselves when
we say now we can, this becomes sustainable economic development by
pursuing these avenues exclusively. Then we're on a slippery slope, and
what we're doing is a real disservice to the people that value these
things and value the community and values. We've got to develop. We've
got to have some plants in here. They could be high tech plants. We
would encourage that. We

Page 44

want to get some business
that want to come, we live in the most beautiful place in the world,
period. We live here. It is wonderful, and there are people that want to
come here and live. They can bring high tech jobs to us that are not
polluting in terms of the environment. They can be housed in buildings
that already exist, but that have a minimum impact in terms of the
environment when they come here. These mobile entrepreneurs and
retirees, the college students themselves, and be thinking of ways we
can encourage them to provide opportunities for them so they can stay
and not just be here for four years and go on, or live through their
college years and go to Research Triangle [Research Triangle Park, NC].
Now you've got to Atlanta, Charlotte—

ROB AMBERG:

Right.

RAYMOND RAPP:

Whatever. I think we can do that without, while preserving it. I think
it's just a fundamental respect for all of these segments and what they
bring to us.